Highly Recommended Cabaret: MELISSA ERRICO & THE TED FIRTH QUINTET (A Noir Romance, Birdland)

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by Tony Frankel on February 3, 2023

in Theater-New York

WHERE THERE IS MELISSA ERRICO,
THERE IS LOVE

In the Valentine’s no-brainer department, you can’t do better than celebrate your love (whether it’s you or someone else), by attending A Noir Romance. a cabaret with the great Melissa Errico at Birdland Theater in NYC February 10-14, 2023. The evening features classic standards including Harold Arlen, David Raksin, Harry Warren, Rodgers & Hammerstein, Michel Legrand, and Stephen Sondheim, in addition to new songs written especially for her by David Shire, Peter Foley, and Adam Guettel. Just as exciting is her band: The Tedd Firth Quintet featuring Russell Malone on guitar. (Special guests nightly TBA.)

As I said in the review of her previous album, Sondheim Sublime, Melissa’s emotional, authentic, stirring, gracious, sophisticated interpretations are delivered with her delicate, dulcet, relaxed, pleasant, unpretentious, murmuring warble of a vibrato. Refinement, subtlety, and shadings are ever-present here, even in songs that are not always thought of as ballads.

With her trademark sexy smarts, La Errico will be a Valentine’s femme fatale, feeling her way through a night-lit world of uncertainty and mischief with a sound that came to life in American movies of the forties, passed on to the world as a permanent emotional field. The week of shows presents a seductive suite of Noir songs inspired by her latest album Out of the Dark. From “Angel Eyes” to “The Man That Got Away,” Melissa celebrates the sexy, swinging music of voluptuous fatalism and doomed love, of smoky nightclubs and half-lit hotel rooms. (If you’re not moist by now, something is wrong!)

Melissa Errico – A Noir Romance
The Tedd Firth Quintet featuring Russell Malone
Birdland, 315 West 44th near 8th Ave.
Fri, Feb 10 thru Tues, Feb 14, 2023
Fri-Sun at 7:00 & 9:30; Mon at 8:30; Tues at 5:30 & 8:30
for tix ($20-45 music charge), call (212) 581-3080 or visit Birdland Jazz
$20 food and beverage minimum

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